Transgender activist Jazz Jennings posted a message of gratitude on Instagram to fans for their support following the reality TV star’s sex change surgery.
“I’m doing great, thanks for all of the love and support,” the I Am Jazz star said.
Earlier this month, Jennings – who was born a biological male but began transitioning to a female at age five – celebrated the upcoming surgery in a YouTube video.
“I’m going to have new genitalia,” Jennings acclaimed in the video. “Penis to vagina. That’s some serious shit, y’all. I am just … I can’t believe it. I’m going to have a vagina.”
“This is something I’ve wanted my entire life,” the star added, saying that this was a goal set at the age of three.
However, a recent article in the Atlantic highlights the concerns of some who had “transitioned” to the opposite sex, but regretted their decision and attempted to reverse the changes, even though some surgical interventions cannot always be reliably reversed:
Many of these so-called detransitioners argue that their dysphoria was caused not by a deep-seated mismatch between their gender identity and their body but rather by mental-health problems, trauma, societal misogyny, or some combination of these and other factors. They say they were nudged toward the physical interventions of hormones or surgery by peer pressure or by clinicians who overlooked other potential explanations for their distress.
Some mental health practitioners say those medical professionals eager to “affirm” children’s assertions that they are of a gender that is at odds with their biological sex are “ignoring the complexity, and fluidity, of gender-identity development in young people,” says the Atlantic report.
“These colleagues are approving teenagers for hormone therapy, or even top surgery, without fully examining their mental health or the social and family influences that could be shaping their nascent sense of their gender identity,” the professionals say.
Jennings is co-author of a children’s picture book titled I Am Jazz and also of a memoir called, Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen. In 2017, New York toymaker Tonner Doll Company also released the first transgender doll for children ages eight and up, based on Jennings.
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